


Artist AU

by mariathepenguin



Category: Rookie Blue
Genre: AU, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-22
Updated: 2014-08-22
Packaged: 2018-02-14 05:56:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2180502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariathepenguin/pseuds/mariathepenguin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gail prides herself on being very careful. She has immense respect for the hot metal and many, many sharp objects that she's been using in her work since she was seventeen. She makes a point of snickering at the occasional butterfingers sculptor that shows up at their opening with burn marks or gashes all over their arms.</p><p>Which makes it even more mortifying when she winds up in the emergency room with a nasty looking burn stretching the length of her forearm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Artist AU

**Author's Note:**

> This is an sculptor!Gail and live people doctor!Holly AU, because why not?

 

Gail prides herself on being very careful. She has immense respect for the hot metal and many, many sharp objects that she's been using in her work since she was seventeen. She makes a point of snickering at the occasional butterfingers sculptor that shows up at their opening with burn marks or gashes all over their arms.

Which makes it even more mortifying when she winds up in the emergency room with a nasty looking burn stretching the length of her forearm.

And the worst part is, it wasn't even her fault. (Not that it would be)

Nope. It was her stupid faced brother's fault for thinking that walking into her workshop unannounced would be in any way a not completely idiotic thing to do.

"Stop glaring," he mutters. "It's creeping the nurses out."

"I'll fucking glare if I want to, loser," she says. "You maimed me."

He at least has the good grace to look guilty.

"I said I was sorry," he says. "I texted you to say I was coming."

"I don't look at my phone when I'm working, dumbass," she says.

"Yeah, I know, your muse, or whatever." He is saved from another glare by a very bored looking nurse calling Gail's name. Just as she stands up, Steve's phone rings and he glances at it before turning to her with a guilty look on his face.

"Go," she sighs, because the look is too reminiscent of dad's just before he ran out of her piano recital that time, and mom's, well, never. But she's a grown up who doesn't need her brother to hold her hand so she nods him away and even lets him hug her before he hurries away.

She's okay while the nurse takes her blood pressure and temperature, but the pain has spiked to jaw grinding level before the doctor walks in.

"Finally," she grunts, when the doctor breezes in, what feels like 12 hours later. "Were you planning on letting me pass out from pain before you sent someone in?"

The doctor smiles apologetically as she snaps on her gloves.

"Sorry," she says. This place is a madhouse today." She smiles again, more friendly and less apologetic, and Gail feels her bad mood lessen by just the tiniest degree, despite her best efforts.

"I’m Dr. Stewart," she says, as she flips through the chart at the end of the bed. "Looks like you have a pretty nasty burn on your arm."

"Wasn't my fault," Gail says. "My brother is a bonehead."

"What happened?"

"I was welding a piece together and my brother startled me. My arm knocked against a piece of hot metal and here we are." The doctor picks her arm up and she winces.

"Sorry." Dr. Stewart's hands are pleasantly cool against her overheated skin, and Gail bites back any comments on manhandling patients.

"What were you welding?"

"I'm a sculptor," Gail explains. "I mostly work with metal, but I'm flexible." Dr. Stewart hums at that, and she flushes, probably from the pain. "So when can I get out of here?"

"Soon," Dr. Stewart promises. "This mostly looks like a first degree burn, so we'll clean it and bandage it and we'll have you out of here in no time." She smiles again, a casual, easy smile that makes Gail self conscious. "And I'm gonna give you something for the pain. That must hurt a lot."

"A little," Gail says, injecting a little bit of tough girl swagger into her voice. She shrugs, and hisses in pain when her burned arm scrapes against her side. "Maybe more than a little," she says reluctantly.

                                                                  *                                                                       

One hour and a syringe of painkiller later, Gail is feeling a lot better about... well, everything. The world seems to be more rounded off, kind of glowy, like an old polaroid.

The sharp pain in her arm has faded to a barely-there ache, and the absence of it means that she can think about the piece that she left in her workshop when Steve carted her off to the hospital. She slides off the bed and heads for the door, only to bump into the doctor.

"Ow," she says. Then she brightens. "Actually, not ow. Awesome meds, doc."

Dr. Stewart frowns.

"Where are you going?"

"My piece," Gail explains. "I need to get it done, like yesterday."

"That's not gonna happen today." Dr. Stewart leads her gently back to bed by her shoulders. "We're going to keep you for observation for a little while, and someone will have to come and pick you up." Gail allows her to manoeuvre her back to the bed.

"My brother will come and get me," Gail says. "Then he's gonna buy me dinner." She lifts her arm to examine her newly bandaged forearm. "Least he can do." She feels dizzy, so she lies back as the doctor writes something and peers at stuff and does things

(The pain medicine is really fucking strong)

And she just watches her. Maybe it's the relief from pain, or the quiet, but this is the first time she's really looked at her. Looked at her dark eyes and shiny hair and nice lips and- shit, she's been caught staring.

Now the doctor's probably wondering what she did to get stuck with a creepy, sexual-harassing patient. Great.

"Sorry," she mutters.

"It's okay," Dr. Stewart says genuinely, as unflappable as she was earlier when Gail was being tetchy and cranky.

'I just wanna go back to work," Gail says. "I was building this thing... " she trails off. "I just thought of it this morning and I'm afraid I'm gonna lose it." She sighs. "That doesn't make sense."

"No, I get it," Dr. Stewart says. She is fiddling with something over Gail's head, and Gail realises that the doctor smells really, really good.

"Ms. Peck..."

"Oh god, please call me Gail. Ms. Peck makes me sound like a tool. Which I am not. I am actually very cool."

"Gail..."

"Hey, that rhymed!"

"Gail." The doctor looks equally amused and frustrated. "Do you want me to call you someone? Family, friends, to keep you company?"

"Nah, I'm okay. My brother keeps calling and that's annoying enough. And my parents mostly care about injured in the line of duty type wounds." She frowns. "Wow, these drugs really are good. Maybe my brother's precinct could use these for interrogation."

The doctor's face shifts from amusement to worry back to amusement in the space of those two sentences. "Most people don't get as chatty as you when they're on pain meds." Her smile really is beautiful. Like fireflies in a jar.

"I'm not usually like this. Must be the company."

"Oh, yeah?"

"It's not like you have to worry about being uncool when you're surrounded by all these nerds," Gail says, making a hand movement that is meant to encompass the whole hospital.

"Glad to help in any way I can," Dr. Stewart says, half laughing.

"Hey, don't you have somewhere to be?" Gail is not at her best right now, but she is fairly sure that doctors don't usually spend this much time with patients.

"Not for the next few minutes," Dr. Stewart says. "I thought I could keep you company for a little while. Unless you want me to go?" She moves to leave.

"No!" Gail says quickly. "Um. You can stay. If you want."

"Okay." Dr. Stewart takes a seat in the chair squeezed in between her bed and the empty one next to it.

"Okay," Gail echoes, and she smiles her first real smile all day.

 

*

 

Three hours later, the painkiller has mostly worn off and she is feels sore and tired and all she wants to do is crawl into bed.

Steve texted and said he would be there in half an hour forty minutes ago, and, shifts uncomfortably in her horrible hospital waiting room chair while she glares at her phone and waits for him to call.

"Hey."

It takes Gail a second to recognise the person talking to her, because Dr. Stewart has changed out of her white coat and into a jeans and a casual shirt.

"Oh. Hi," she says slowly. "Are you going home now?"

"Yeah. In a minute. I thought your brother was coming to get you?"

"That's supposed to be the plan," she grumbles. She feels oddly vulnerable in front of this doctor, who, she is slowly remembering, heard a lot more about Gail than she likes people to know. She wants to be a cranky mystery wrapped in an bitchy enigma, not a lonely girl with family issues.

She wants to curl up, pull her feet up on the chair and wrap her arms around her knees, but the doctor is looking almost as uncomfortable as she feels, the unflappable exterior apparently gone with her white coat and stethoscope. It makes her feel better, oddly.

"Dr. Stewart-"

"I'm off shift," she interrupts. "Call me Holly."

"Holly," Gail repeats. "I'm sorry about earlier. I must have sounded like an idiot."

"No, it was sweet," Dr. -Holly says. "You were very nice to me."

"What did I say?" Gail asks warily.

"You told me I smelled good and you told me you lived with boys who smell like feet."

"They do," Gail says, trying to be casual but fully aware that her face is bright red. "I gave them both deodorant for Christmas but neither of them got the hint."

Holly laughs and sits down, and it's like before except this time she's not high and Holly's off shift.

Her phone buzzes, and she glances at the screen.

"Oh, my brother's here," she says.

"Oh." Holly looks disappointed. "Well. Okay, then."

And Gail's not usually this bold, but there is a little voice telling her that she is going to regret not doing anything if she lets this moment pass.

"Give me your phone," she says abruptly. Holly passes it over with only a raised eyebrow. Her hands are soft, and Gail remembers how gentle they'd been on her wrist as she'd examined her burn. She shakes it off and quickly types her number in.

"There," she says, handing it back. "You should call me, and then we should go for drinks or something." Holly looks pleased and flustered, smiling at her shyly, and Gail feels a tiny burst of relief that she hadn't read her wrong.

"I'll do that," Holly says.

Her phone buzzes again, and she looks away from Holly to see Steve by the nurses station, grinning at her.

I'd better go," she says, shooting to her feet.

"Okay," Holly says, and stands up too. "See you soon."

"See you, Holly," she says, and she turns and walks towards Steve before she gets awkward.

"Really, Gail? You're picking up chicks in a hospital?" He slings an arm around her shoulders and she leans into him tiredly as he steers them toward the exit.

"Shut up," she says.

"Never," he says, still grinning like an idiot.

And she can't help it; she smiles too.

 

*

 

_See you at three then :) xx_

Gail reads through the message one more time and sighs.  She'd seriously been considering calling to cancel her date with Holly - she can call it that because Holly called a couple of days ago and asked her out officially - but she opened the last message Holly sent instead and now she's sitting in her room, sulking.

"Hey." Dov raps his knuckles against the doorjamb and leans against the frame. "Are you coming to the arcade with us?"

"No," she mutters. "I have somewhere to be."

Dov raises his eyebrows and steps into her room. She considers telling him to get out, but it'll take too much energy. So she flops backwards on her bed and glares at the ceiling instead.

"Is that place a torture chamber? Because that's what your face is saying to me right now."

She does throw a pillow at him, and he ducks with the ease of long practice.

"I have a date," she says to the ceiling. "With the doctor who patched me up after after Steve tried to kill me." She waves her newly dressed and bandaged arm in the air.

"That's a bad thing?" Dov sits in the beanbag in the corner of her room, and really, when did these people get so comfortable in her room?

"No," she says. It should be a good thing. A really, really good thing, because she hasn't gone out on a date in a while and she hasn't been able to stop thinking about Holly since she called.

But she has this insane and very inconvenient anxious buzzing in her stomach that tells her that her life will be so much simpler and easier if she just doesn't go. If she just stays on her couch and eats cheese puffs and maybe makes some sketches for a commission she's been asked to do then she can keep things the way they are. Simple.

"I really like her," she sighs. "Or, I think I could. Will. I don't know." She frowns. "I hate feelings."

A pillow hits her in the face, and she shoots up.

"What the hell?" Dove stares at her, unimpressed.

"Don't be stupid," he says. "You want to go. So go."

And that weird-ass pep talk was what she needed, apparently.

"Fine," she mumbles.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. And get out of my room."

He does, thankfully, and she rolls back over to stare at the ceiling. She still has a couple of hours of brooding time left over before she has to get ready.

 

*

 

Gail had forgotten that the antibiotics and painkillers she got at the hospital meant that she couldn't have any alcohol, so when Holly called they agreed to have a late lunch date at a cafe Gail likes. It's small and kind of weird and very much in her comfort zone.

She gets there early and stakes out a spot in her favourite armchair. It's yellow and kind of furry and she sips her mocha as she keeps an eye on the door, waiting for Holly to walk in.

After what feel like four hours of waiting but is really only 16 minutes, Holly walks in.

She looks around for a couple of seconds, and Gail can see her tight grip on her bag even from several feet away.

"Holly," she calls, standing and resisting the urge to throw in a dorky wave, and Holly sees her and heads over.

"Gail." Holly leans forward and kisses her cheek before dumping her bag on the ground. She looks around, taking in the garish coloured sofas and mismatched art all over the small space. "This place is-"

"Tacky, I know," Gail says. "But their chocolate cake is to die for."

"I wasn't going to say tacky," Holly protests. "I was going to go for quirky."

The trainee waiter/barista who's been watching them nervously from behind the counter practically tiptoes over and takes Holly's coffee order before running over to start making her drink, very carefully.

"Poor thing," Holly says. "He looks about 14."

"Hm," Gail says. He seems to be having trouble with the steamer, and his head whips around frantically as he looks for the manager. "I managed. This place only makes about five different types of coffee."

"You worked here?" After a couple of seconds of deliberation, Holly takes the same sofa as Gail's, curling up and the opposite end and tangling her fingers in the ends of her scarf.

"The last two years of high school," Gail says. "And some of college, and when I was first starting out. Being a struggling artist was a bitch."

"Really? The movies make it sound so romantic." Holly is smiling, settling in, leaning back against the sofa and resting her face in the palm of her hand.   

"It was," Gail says. "For about five minutes."Then I ran out of ramen and they cut my phone off." Holly laughs, her eyes sparkling.

"Still sounds kind of romantic to me," Holly says. "I went from high school to college to med school to residency. Which was fine, I mean, it's what I wanted, but your way sounds... I don't know. It sounds kind of brave."

Holly is blushing a deep red, and luckily (for her) the trainee toddles over with her coffee and very carefully puts it down in front of her.

"No one's ever called me brave before," Gail says, grinning. "Insane, yeah. Delusional a couple of times."

"Nothing wrong with a little insanity every now and then," Holly says.

 

*

 

It's been two hours and Gail hasn't felt the urge to bolt the whole time, which is decidedly unusual for a first date, for her. Holly doesn't look like she wants to leave either. Her feet are tucked up under the sofa just like Gail's, and she's slowly inched closer -or maybe Gail's moved, she can't be sure - close enough that Gail could easily reach out and touch her, if she wanted.

They've had a couple more coffees, and a slice of cake each. They've described their family trees and first pets and funny and embarrassing school stories and it's all so first datey, all so predictable, except not. Except it's more than that in a way that Gail can't put words to but can feel as a growing pressure in her chest.

"I can't believe I didn't ask you!" Holly says suddenly. How's your arm?"

Actually Gail had forgotten all about it. "Almost back to normal," she says. "You did a good job."

Holly reaches forward and pulls her burned arm forward, the edge of the bandage just about visible from under the long sleeved shirt she wore to hide it. She doesn't really need it but showing up to a date with a visibly burned arm isn't ideal, even if your date is a doctor.

Holky pushes her shirtsleeve up and runs her fingers over the edges of the bandage, and Gail shivers.

"What does the skin look like? Is it puckering? Does it feel like it's pulling uncomfortably?"

"Holly," Gail says, trying not to laugh. "Please. Keep your nerdiness within the walls of your hospital." She does laugh, then, but she doesn't pull her hand away.

"Sorry," Holly says, blushing a deep red. "I can get a little..."

"Yeah," GaIl says. She studies Holly, looks at her still-pink skin and fingers wrapped securely around Gail's, at her lovely hair and pretty blue shirt that sets her skin off so well, and she makes a snap decision.

"I want to show you something," she says, and she tugs Holly up off of the sofa to one of the little alcoves in the back. when she's halfway there she regrets doing this, she wants to turn back and curl up again, maybe inch forward a little more, maybe get Holly to tell her what happened to her pet gerbil. But Holly is gripping her hand tight, looking interested in the eclectic art that's scattered even in the back and Gail eventually comes to a stop in front of the piece she was looking for.

It's small; it could easily fit into a ten inch box, but it's complex and intricate, the most difficult project she had worked on, by far, for a long time after she'd made it.

A gnarled, twisted thorny rosebush sits on a dias in a corner of the room. It folds in on itself again and again. The turns are almost impossible for the eye to follow.

When she had finished it she had  carefully painted it black, covering it in layer after layer until it acquired a sullen gleam.

"You made this," Holly says suddenly, turning to stare at Gail.

"When I was an angry starving artist," she says. She hasn't really looked at this piece in a while, and she keeps on glancing back at it. "The Robertsons own this place and gave me my first job. They're this really cute older couple that travelled the world then came back and opened a cafe. They bought this from me in one of my 'should I buy food or pay a bill' crises."

"Thank you. For showing it to me."

Gail shrugs. "Fair's fair. You showed me your work-" she raises her bandaged arm, her hand still clasped in Holly's- "so I'm showing you mine.

"You're right, that does seem fair," Holly says, and she tugs her forward gently. Gail lets herself be pulled forward, and then Holly's hand is on her face, and her mouth is on hers, and they are kissing, and the feeling in Gail's chest multiplies a hundred, a thousand times.

 

 


End file.
